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Flash Slideshow: Mass High Tech All-Stars Thought Leadership Roundtable
Christopher Gabrieli, who ran for Massachusetts governor in 2006, has been busy leading Massachusetts 2020, the education nonprofit he co-founded, and making life sciences investments at Bessemer Venture Partners. Another gubernatorial election is coming up in 2010, but this time he’s not running, he says. The three-time candidate for public office recently talked investment strategy and public policy with Mass High Tech reporter Galen Moore.
Q: What kinds of investment opportunities are most exciting to you right now?
A: The bulk of the opportunities tend to be more traditional than people think. You know, everyone is always interested in the less traditional and it’s worth looking at. (But) certainly in biotech the best opportunities remain in a great new drug that could really make a big difference for patients. And that still has a hard-to-beat quality to it.
Q: What can government do to stimulate innovation?
A: This (federal) administration, better than any in American history, understands the centrality of heavy investment in early-stage, core research functions in a university type of setting. I mean, the reason America dominates the world biotechnology space is because the American government since World War II has had this huge investment in not companies, not in stuff that has to do with commercialization, but in purely the training and the research agendas of world-class, world-leading scientists at the Harvards and MITs and Stanfords and Mass Generals of the world.
Q: What about the state? What can Massachusetts government do to make the state more competitive?
A: I do think the store of the risk capital is an important measure of success. I think any drying up of those supply lines, if there’s a whisper of that, it’s definitely bad from an innovation point of view. I will tell you I think the biggest thing is I believe that (limited partners like) the state pension fund and the major Massachusetts endowments like Harvard and MIT ought to say it’s in the interest of our entities not only to have venture capital investments anywhere, but to have more venture capital funds form and grow and succeed in Massachusetts.
If they said, ‘We’ll put in 10 percent of any fund that can raise the other 80, you know, and Harvard will put in 5 percent and MIT will put in 5 percent’ — making up my numbers here, right? — ‘of any new fund that’s formed that can raise the rest of the money outside,’ that would create an incredible signal toward the marketplace. It would embolden some junior partners at some funds probably to say, let’s start our own fund.
Q: What about public education? What can move the needle for the tech economy in terms of what companies need in skilled workers?
A: Well, I think that the advantage of being a former candidate for office, but not necessarily a future candidate, is that I can be blunter than I would be if I were entertaining running for office. Sometimes politicians will connect the K-12 education system to economic growth more tightly than any honest evidence suggests it connects. The reason to invest in K-12 is not to benefit our economy. First, the timelines are too long. Helping students in the sixth grade do well is too obscure to the success of a company that needs engineers today, right?
Secondly, Massachusetts and Silicon Valley, all the places that are really strong with the highest skills economy, they participate in global job hunting. I do think that it is troubling to have a large percentage of the people who grow up here not get the basic skills and capabilities to participate in the strongest part of our economy. I think it’s a morally troubling thing.
Q: So just to confirm: You’re not planning to run for governor again?
A: Want to break the story? I’m not planning to run. I am not going to run for governor in 2010. I’m not ruling out ever participating in elected politics again. But I feel very fortunate that this governor and this Legislature and this administration, on the communication side and so on, have been eager to partner with me, and I’ve had terrific opportunities to express my public policy side.
From another angle
Larry Cheng
Fidelity Ventures partner
“Tell us about Chris Gabrieli the venture capitalist vs. Chris Gabrieli the politician.”
In 1998, Fidelity Ventures partner Larry Cheng got his first job in venture capital from Chris Gabrieli, starting out as an associate scouting biotech deals. Shortly thereafter, Gabrieli made the first of several unsuccessful runs at public office, seeking election in Congressional District 8, which went to Michael Capuano instead.
“I think it was less than two or three weeks (before) Chris took me aside — the offices of Bessemer are a house in Wellesley — and he took me for a walk down the hill and told me he was going to be running for Congress. He told me the reason he wanted to do this was that he came from an immigrant family and has lived the American dream and he wanted to make it possible for other people to live the American dream.
“He’s a very genuine guy. He’s totally authentic. There’s a lot of folks in the business who wouldn’t qualify as a nice guy, but he is. I really enjoyed getting to know him through the years. What was kind of tough was, in the election process, you see how a candidate gets portrayed. I really think he was trying to do something to give back to society. What he’s done since those elections has proved that. But he wasn’t portrayed that way in the first go-round. Whenever the Wellesley VC goes into politics, it’s viewed with some degree of skepticism — and maybe with good reason.”
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